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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeNotCharles" data-source="post: 4891820" data-attributes="member: 79945">Another idea is Battletech 4E: outside your mechs, your characters have few powers and abilities (hell, use a different RPG altogether for this scale) but when you climb into a giant war robot, you get your 4E abilities.  The "class" now makes more sense since the machine is actually manufactured like this, it's not just skills picked up over your career.  Multiclassing means heavily modifying your mech with parts from another class.  Standard weapons and armour are equipment upgrades; magic is poorly understood alien tech.The "dying" status indicates that the pilot is injured and unconscious, but they can be brought back by activating the mech's built-in medkit and injecting them with stimulants.  This explains how a mech can go from "almost out of the fight" to "working perfectly" in a round.Defender-class mechs put most of their power output towards shielding and weapons that pack a punch up-close, but trade off the ability to make long-range attacksStriker-class mechs focus on maneuverability or long-range weapons, with most of their energy going towards engines and jump jets or towards advanced stabilization platforms for a long-range weapon platformLeader-class mechs are combat support and include advanced comm packages and the ability to remote-pilot other mechsController-class mechs carry lots of missiles, including experimental small-scale Genesis bombsEngineers divide the mech power sources into 4 classes, although it's possible to adapt certain upgrades to other power sources:"Martial" mechs are built on classical engineering principles but at a larger scale.  They don't have as many exotic capabilities, but they're considered more reliable.  The best engineers can push the envelope of design to make them do things that should only be possible with exotic technology."Arcane" mechs (an engineering in-joke based on the complexity of the design) are upgraded with advanced technology, mostly reverse-engineered from aliens.  Although the specs are always better than Martial mechs, there's a high tendency to break down."Divine" mechs contain technology received as gifts from the Progenitors, a highly advanced alien race which occasionally chooses to "uplift" younger species for its own bizarre reasons.  "Divine" technology is completely opaque to engineers, but modular enough to slot into an existing mech design easily and rarely if ever fails.  Many pilots and engineers don't trust it, but it's so useful that many others grudgingly accept it or even prefer to work with it."Primal" mechs are a new design, built from the ground up around a biological power source known as Protoculture.  One of the more common effects is the ability of a mech to transform from a humanoid shape to that of a jet or tank.There are rumours of "Psionic" mechs on the drawing boards, which contain amplification helmets allowing the pilot to project their own mental abilities across the battlefield.Some common classes of mechs:"Fighter" class mechs are one of the oldest and most reliable in use, and the exemplar of the defender role.  With heavy armour and powerful short-range guns, they excel at getting up close to enemy mechs and locking down their position.  They've recently been augmented with a new design codenamed "Battlerage" that redirects the power-plant output to temporary shields with every attack."Ranger" class mechs are a versatile scouting platform, with designs emphasizing mobility and others built around a state-of-the-art long-range sniper rifle.  A new design codenamed "Beastmaster" features on-board drones."Rogue" class mechs are incredibly maneuverable and built for precision strikes."Warlord" class mechs are a standard officer's mech, with advanced tactical overviews and a medical monitor on each subordinate's mech.  They have the ability to remote-activate subordinate's weapons and medkits."Wizard" class mechs are the standard weapons platform for experimental technologies, including everything from missiles that do incredible blast damage, to terrain-deforming effects, to holographic generators, to self-assembline nanite drones."Swordmage" class mechs are built around a teleportation and dimensional warp system."Sorceror" class mechs have the most cutting-edge advanced weaponry, which is also often the most unreliable.  (The old engineer's joke that it works "depending on the phase of the moon" almost seems to hold true for some of these.)"Warlock" class mechs have weaponry adapted from specific alien races."Bard" class mechs are Warlord-class mechs augmented with experimental technology (including one configuration that includes a quantum computer to predict battlefield conditions in advance!)And so on...</blockquote>

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